NEWS + ANALYSIS

Countries that offer “free” health care can seem like an attractive alternative to high medical bills and insurance rates. When health care isn’t governed by price mechanisms, though, it is inevitably rationed instead by time spent waiting in line to receive treatment — and delayed care is a matter of life and death for patients in critical or rapidly deteriorating condition.

It’s bad enough when people use their own money to lobby the government for money or special treatment. For years, the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), an Atlas Network partner based in the United Kingdom, has written about an even more insidious problem — the widespread use of taxpayer funds to lobby for more self-serving privileges. Last week, the UK government’s Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) announced that it is joining the fight by “amending its grant agreements to include a new anti-lobbying, anti-sock puppet clause,” and urging other departments to follow suit.

A hard currency backed by specie like gold or silver imposes sound economic policies on the nations that use them, but currency established by central bank fiat requires sound policies to be established by political mechanisms in concert with the support of the electorate. In the case of the stagnation in Greece, the European Union is effectively imposing fiscal discipline, and Greeks have resisted that outside influence.

Every year at the Oscars telecast, a few Academy Award winners inevitably use their acceptance speeches as a platform for their own pet political causes. During Sunday’s broadcast, Best Supporting Actress winner Patricia Arquette spent a few moments calling for “wage equality once and for all, and equal rights for women in the United States of America.” That moment inspired a response from Atlas Network partner Independent Women’s Forum (IWF).

Everybody’s talking about bitcoin. That shouldn’t be too surprising, because bitcoin is catching on with the public as a versatile new form of currency — and who’s not interested in talking about money? Although the market value of bitcoin fluctuates like any commodity, demand shows no signs of vanishing. Unfortunately, much of the recent bitcoin conversation focuses on its potential for illegal activity, especially after the conviction on several criminal charges of the founder of Silk Road, an anonymous Internet market that allowed users to use bitcoin to buy and sell drugs and other contraband. Some are now calling for government regulation of bitcoin’s use.

Deroy Murdock, senior fellow with Atlas Network, will testify before the United States Senate Finance Committee at a hearing on the topic of fairness in taxation on Tuesday, March 3, 2015, at 9 a.m. ET in 215 Dirksen Senate Office Building.

Kansas is spending billions on public education, yet student assessment scores remain static. It’s a familiar story in public school systems across the country, and Atlas Network partner Kansas Policy Institute (KPI) breaks down the details of education spending, taxpayer aid, and student achievement data for its state in the 2015 edition of its annual pocket-sized K–12 Public Education Factbook. It serves as an easy-access reference book for policymakers and the public.

China has made enormous economic progress in the years following the death of Mao Zedong. The liberalization of the economy has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of conditions of abject misery, in which most earned little more than the equivalent of a cup of rice per day. It also brought less expensive goods and services and a productive workforce to perhaps billions of people all over the world. However, this spectacular market success has overshadowed the vast inefficiency and repression caused by China’s government as it indulges in wasteful central planning and seeks to maintain tight political control.